Christ-Centered Worship is Trinitarian Worship

I used to wonder who am I worshiping here? Am I worshiping the Father? The Son? What about the Holy Spirit?

This is why Christ- centered worship is so important.

True Christ-centered worship as opposed to Christ-only worship, has all that God has done for us in Christ when we worship Him.

The Father loved us and sent the Son to die for our sins and reconcile us to Himself.

The Son loved us and laid down His life to give us the fullness of salvation and the right to be adopted as God’s own beloved Sons and daughters.

The Spirit reveals that love and communicates that love to our hearts and then overflows that love into love for God in return.

When we worship the Father through Jesus Christ, we are worshiping the entire Trinity all at once.

We are worshiping Christ as the glory of God the Father in and through the Holy Spirit who makes that glory known.

That is true Christ-centered worship.

When we focus on Christ and all that God has done for us in Him, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, working together to bring about our salvation, Christ centered worship becomes Trinitarian worship to the glory of God the Father who saved us through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit.

“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.”

Here is where we start to get into the meat of how to worship God.

Because you’ve heard the term that we should have Christ-centered worship.

But I would like to take this moment to explain what that actually means, and you’re going to hear some of these themes come up again throughout the rest of the sermon, but I want to get a big picture overview here on who we worship and what that looks like theologically.

Because what I want you to see is this...

Christ-Centered Worship is ultimately Trinitarian Worship

What can functionally happen in our minds when we worship God is that we worship Christ and no one else.

Well that’s not so bad is it?

Here’s the problem with that.

When we simply Christ-centered worship to Christ-only worship, we functionally put a division within the Trinity where Christ is the point and the Father and the Spirit are little more than an afterthought that we know are there, but we don’t really know what to do with them.

But wait...isn’t Christ Preeminent? Before all things and in Him all things hold together? (Col. 1:15-18).

Yes, but you need to ask why is He preeminent? Why has God exalted Him over all things?

Because Christ reveals the glory of God.

Hebrews 1:3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.

When we have a Christ-only worship, what can tend to happen is that we start to see the Father as the angry God, and Jesus as the loving brother.

And so we have hard thoughts about God and see Him as stern, hard to please, and unwilling to forgive.

But if Christ is the glory of God, then all that Christ is in love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness shows us who the Father is as well...

And the Spirit who communicates those blessings of God to our souls as well.

Look at what Jesus says.

True worshipers...will worship the Father...

The Father is seeking such people…to worship Him...

Jesus puts the point of emphasis on true worship on the Father Himself.

Now does this mean its wrong to worship Christ? Of course not.

Both the Son and the Spirit receive worship in the New Testament as coequally, coeternally God with the Father.

God is Trinity. Three Divine Persons…One God.

But what I want you to see is that when we worship the Father, through the Son, in the joy of the Holy Spirit, our Christ-centered worship honors the Holy Trinity as the One, True, Holy God.

Think of it like this...

When we worship Christ as the image of invisible God, and the exact imprint of His nature (Heb. 1:3, Col. 1:15), then in worshiping Christ, we are worshiping God the Father and all that He is.

But then you also have this. Jesus calls God the Father.

The only way to worship God as Father is through the Son Jesus Christ.

We can know God as holy. Righteous Judge. Glory and Majesty.

But we can only know Him as Father, and more importantly our Father, when adopts us in Jesus Christ.

And that can only happen through the powerful work of the Holy Spirit.

John 1:12-13 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

How are we born of God? By being born again, born from above - John 3.

By being Born of Water, cleansing of sin, and the Spirit, that is the Holy Spirit.

So when we come to worship, we want to draw near to God and worship God as Trinity.

And Trinitarian worship is Christ centered worship because the only way to worship the Father is through faith in the Son by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit.

When we worship God as Father through Jesus Christ, we are glorifying God as the All-glorious, saving Trinity who brought us out of sin into life.

The Father planned salvation and sent the Son.

The Son suffered and died on the cross for our sins.

And the Spirit gives us faith and applies all the benefits of salvation to us chief among them adoption in the Son by the Father.

As Jesus said John 14:6 I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

When we focus our worship on God the Father, we are ultimately worshiping Christ and the Holy Spirit all at the same time because God would not be our Father without Christ and we would not know Him or His love for us as our Father in Christ if God did not pour that love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5).

Christ-centered worship where we worship God the Father is ultimately Trinitarian worship that worship and glorifies the whole GodHead all at once in and through Jesus Christ.